Visiting The Smokies Summer 2020
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Great Smoky Mountains National Park offers 800 miles of trails Step from your car, walk a few yards down a leafcovered path. Suddenly the noise of the traffic, even the warmth of the sun, is gone. In their place — quiet, cool. You’re on a trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In the nation’s most-visited park, there is solitude, even isolation. For those not accustomed to the wilderness offered by following some trails, there are easy walks that offer glimpses of the primeval forest. For other more adventurous, or experienced, hikers, there are challenging trails that lead to some of the most dramatic views the Park has to offer. The Smokies ’ 800 miles of trails range from wide pathways, which served as the thoroughfares for the mountain dwellers of pre-1930, to steep, well-trodden portions of the Appalachian Trail. There has been much public and private investment in trail maintenance in recent years. In 2012, Friends of the Smokies established the Trails Forever endowment thanks to a matching gift from the Aslan Foundation in Knoxville. Today, the $5 million endowment funds a full-time trail crew in Great Smoky Mountains National Park to reconstruct and rehabilitate some of the Park’s most impacted trails. “We are so excited about the progress the Park’s Trails Forever crew has made on Alum Cave Trail just in the last year,” said Brent McDaniel, director of marketing for Friends of the Smokies. “Since 2008, our $5 million Trails Forever endowment has helped fund rehabilitation projects on Jakes Creek, Forney Ridge, Ramsey Cascades, Chimney Tops and now Alum Cave trails. The hard work this crew does and the fact that these improvements will last 75-plus years is truly incredible. These are some of the Park’s most heavily traveled trails so it just makes sense for us to give back and take care of our hiking trails
wherever we can.” The three-year effort to rehabilitate the Chimney Tops Trail ended in 2014. In 2015, Great Smoky Mountains National Park celebrated the recent completion of the Chimney Tops Trail restoration project. More than 1,000 volunteers provided more than 14,000 hours of labor on the project. The popular Alum Cave Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is now undergoing full-scale restoration. The Trails Forever crew will focus restoration efforts on several targeted locations along the 5-mile trail to improve visitor safety and stabilize eroding trail sections. The restoration work will require temporary trail closures throughout the twoyear process.
Short nature walks
For the beginning hiker, shorter, less-strenuous day hikes are plentiful throughout the Park. These, like the longer trails that work their way through the backcountry, offer many miles of nature walks and self-guiding trails to Park visitors. These trails are usually no longer than 1 mile (round-trip) and many serve as educational guides to the Park and surrounding area. Along the way are scattered resting places, usually with a spectacular view for extra measure. The Sugarlands Trail, which begins behind the Sugarlands Visitors Center (2 miles south of Gatlinburg on U.S. 441), gives an introduction to the natural history of the area, as well as history about its human inhabitants. Elkmont, Smokemont and Cosby are some, but not all, of the self-guiding nature trails that give visitors a chance to see and learn more about the mountains than they would just riding through them in a car. One at the Chimneys Picnic Area is a favorite for Continue to page 22
